Posts from the “health” Category

I was watching the Parliament channel yesterday afternoon when I noticed the following little gem from Conservative MP Anne Main. Main was responding to the Labour MP Angela Rayner’s maiden speech in the House of Commons, where Rayner had mentioned, as part of a spirited defence of the National Health Service, that one of her sons had been born at 23 weeks and owed his life to our NHS. Anne Main: “I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) on her maiden speech. It was a very thought-provoking speech and one thing I will take from it was her passionate wishes for her young son, who she said survived at 23 weeks’ gestation. I wish her well in that and some of my…

I know I haven’t been writing much recently, but even I wasn’t expecting the complete absence of posts here during April. Unfortunately though, April turned out to be one of those months where life just takes over. Where no matter what you have planned, something comes along that throws you completely off course. Some of you may remember the problems I had a few years ago that resulted in my having a hysterectomy: an operation incidentally, that failed to fulfil its promise of improving my housewifey skills. Well I’m calling this latest episode Fred and Barney’s revenge, only this time the mystery lump wasn’t in my uterus – well it wouldn’t be really would it, being as I don’t have one! – it was in my…

My mum died last Wednesday night. It doesn’t matter how many times I write that sentence or even how many times I say it out loud, it still doesn’t seem real. But it is. I know it is because I was there when she went. I was there, along with my dad, my brother and my sister, all of us holding her. My childhood family, the family of my growing up, the five of us alone together for the first time in what must be decades. Five of us alone together, and then four. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet. Not for a long time. And I’m not sure we’ll ever get any closer to understanding why. Why now, why so soon.

This is a guest post by Polly A few months back I was sat in the hairdressers and noticed a simply enormous frown line. Fuck, I thought, that looks really terrible. So passing one of those cosmetic surgery lite places I went in to inquire about Botox. Having beaten them down to match the price of somewhere cheaper, I went for a consultation with a somewhat slimy doctor who put me off the whole idea, by telling me how much more ‘confident’ it would make me and basically implying that having 150 quids worth of poison injected into my face would transform my life. I was insulted by this, mainly the suggestion that I wasn’t already full of myself as it was, not to…

In his speech to the Conservative Party Conference yesterday David Cameron claimed that one of the biggest things holding people back in this country “is the shadow of health and safety.” “I was told recently” he claimed “about a school that wanted to buy a set of highlighter pens. But with the pens came a warning. Not so fast – make sure you comply with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. Including plenty of fresh air and hand and eye protection. Try highlighting in all that.” So as you can see, I donned my personal protective equipment and did just that. And he was right: it was bloody hard. I’m not sure though that I understand completely (if indeed at all),…

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